Essay Analysis: AQA A Level Psychology (2018)

Here are the national results for each type of essay in the 2018 AQA A Level Psychology exams.

• The number of essay questions that students had to answer in 2018 dropped to 8, in comparison to 12 in 2017. In the 2017 exams, students answered an essay in every section of the exam and it was good to see the number of essays drop.
• In 2017, essays made up 51% of the entire A-Level, while in 2018 they made up 42%.
• Students performed significantly better on standard 16-mark essays (AO1-6, AO3-10) and application 16-mark essays (AO1-6, AO2-4, AO3-6) in 2018, in comparison to 2017.
• However, students performed worse on the applied 8-mark questions, suggesting that students are struggling to meet the demands on the shorter, applied questions.
• There were no standard 8-mark questions in 2018 and there was no design a study question.

Here are the national results every essay in the 2018 AQA A Level Psychology exam.

• While performance across the essay questions varied slightly, there were no huge surprises like 2017.
• Students performed better on the applied 16-mark question, in comparison to the standard 16-mark questions and applied 8-mark questions.
• Interestingly, it was the applied 8-mark questions which caused the most problems, with these questions receiving the lowest average score. This is in stark contrast to 2017, where these questions received significantly higher marks (54% average).
• It is worth nothing that the weighting of the applied 8-mark questions appears to have changed and now includes all three assessment objectives. Therefore, it is important that teachers review the mark schemes and examiner reports and support their students when structuring these questions to ensure that the demonstrate, knowledge, application and evaluation.